Easter Traditions

The first holiday we ever spent with the Kid was Easter. This was after she started visitations at our apartment, before the adoption. She was then like 6, and she had some concerns that the Easter bunny wouldn't know where she was or how to find her. So I said, well, we'll do the Easter Bunny dance and of course he'll find us. Not to worry.

So that night I made up the first Easter Bunny dance. She had to do it with me, so I'd do a step and then she had to repeat what I did. More rain dance than two step, it involved some clapping and hopping and chanting things like "Easter!".

By Christmas time the Kid was confident that her change of address had gone through, and there never was a Santa dance or anything like that. I forgot about it until the following Easter, when she just expected we would do it again. It turns out that my kid now thinks this is just a normal part of Easter. The Easter dance. I have no idea if she thinks other families also do this, or why we did it that first time. This year, she asked me how I know it--the dance. but I make it up on the fly, and it's different every time.

I wanted to make a traditional Easter dish this year, but as you probably know, vegetarians don't eat ham. I settled on hot cross buns, a traditional food on Good Friday. Then the weekend came and I was just too lazy to make hot cross buns because the recipe was going to take like three hours. The Kid requested pancakes, and I settled on a plan to make pancakes in the shape of bunny heads.

It turns out that this is actually much harder than you might think. Pancake batter just doesn't want to form any shape other than a circle. The final product was globular and asymmetrical. I meant to add chocolate chip eyes and a nose, but I had no chocolate chips in the cupboard, so what I fed to the kid was this weird misshapen pancake that bore no resemblance to a rabbit whatsoever.

Freakin' Awesome Vegetarian Biscuits and Gravy

Wednesday of this week found me hungry and desperate for biscuits and gravy. I looked up a recipe. I had Thursday and Friday off work and on Thursday I wanted to make biscuits, but instead we got up and left early and went to Home Depot where we bought some plants for our garden including tomatoes and herbs and things. We spent the afternoon planting. So no biscuits and gravy on Thursday.

Friday we painted the dining room, living room and foyer. This was a HUGE undertaking because our dining room is lined with book shelves and the books had to be removed and the book shelves put in the kitchen. No biscuits and gravy on Friday.

Saturday we woke up early and cleaned up the mess from the painting the day before. Not kidding when I say this took all day long. No biscuits and gravy on Saturday.

Does my sad story have a happy ending? Yes. Today, Sunday, we had biscuits and gravy. This recipe takes around 20 minutes to prepare. The biscuits are light and fluffy and just a little bit buttery. The gravy is peppery and filling.

Biscuits and Gravy, preparation time: 20 minutes

Makes 6-7 biscuits

Ingredients

Biscuits:

• 2 cups flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup milk
• 1 tablespoon melted butter

Gravy:

• 1 1/2 cups ground vegetarian sausage
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 4 tablespoons flour
• 2 1/2 cups milk
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper

Directions:

Preheat oven 450 degrees. Mix ingredients for biscuits in a bowl--do not over mix. Batter will be wet and sticky. Grease 1 cookie sheet and place spoonfuls of batter onto the cookie sheet. Biscuits will be approximately 2-3 inches wide and 1-2 inches tall. Note that biscuits will retain whatever shape you give them--they don't rise much. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until golden brown.

While the biscuits are baking, heat the sausage in a sauce pan with flour and butter. Add milk slowly. Add salt and pepper and stir until the biscuits are ready.

Delicious Walnut-Cranberry Oatmeal

In my family we eat a lot of oatmeal. It's comforting, healthy and filling. I love the way it fills the house with a smell like fresh bread.

There are a lot of instant oatmeals out there but we prefer the old-fashioned stuff. This is our prefered brand: John McCann's steel cut oats. It comes in a very solid coffee-can type tin, which has other uses when the oatmeal is gone. Because my daughter eats oatmeal pretty much daily, we go through one of these tins in about 2-3 weeks, but for a normal family this might last much longer.

Recipe:

4 cups water
1 cup steel cut oats
2-3 T chopped walnuts
2 T dried cranberries
2-3 T milk (we use vanilla soy milk)
brown sugar to taste

Bring 4 cups water to a boil then add 1 cup steel cut oats. Lower stove temperature. Bring it back to a very gentle boil (more of a simmer, really), and cook it slowly, on a low heat, stirring occasionally. The oatmeal will thicken and the water will become dense and gravy-like. This takes about half an hour to cook.

Stir in brown sugar to your preference, or agave nectar works well too. Serve in a bowl with walnuts, cranberries and milk on top. This makes a good breakfast or a healthy snack.